Al Pacino On Almost Getting Booted From ‘The Godfather’ And The Odd Moment He Realized It Would Be A Great Film – Tribeca Festival
deadline.comAl Pacino was constantly on the verge of getting fired from The Godfather but director Francis Ford Coppola saved the role that launched his career by shifting around shooting sequences to move up a scene – the one where Michael Corleone commits to the family business by popping another mobster and a crooked cop in a restaurant.“They were going to let me go.
Francis said, ‘I want you to know, I believe in you. Francis pushes that scene forward. The studio liked it,” Pacino said at a screening of the restored film for its 50th anniversary as part of Tribeca Festival’s retrospective series.
The rest is history, and maybe destiny. When he first got the part, Pacino said, he called his grandmother. She informed him that his late grandfather actually came from the town of Corleone in Sicily.In a wide-ranging Q&A with author Michael Hainey in front an adoring crowd, the actor talked about his early career trying to make it in New York City as a thespian while working as an apartment building super who couldn’t fix anything. “I knew this Greek guy, and I would call the Greek guy and he would come over and fix it.
They always wanted to let me go. Why they kept me, to this day, I don’t know.”He said he hadn’t watched the 1972 film that garnered him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor (alongside James Caan and Robert Duvall) for about ten years.The film won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando) and Best Adapted Screenplay.
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